They just. don't. get it.

The new issue of Newsweek has the stars of the movie The Da Vinci Code (Tom Hanks plays the lead [thanks, Tom]) on its cover. In the cover story, writer Devin Gordon refers to the "inflammatory, if well-traveled, conspiracy theory" of the novel: "that Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and fathered a daughter, whose bloodline has survived into present-day Europe—and that the Catholic Church has been covering up the "truth" for 2,000 years."

What Mr. Gordon doesn't mention -- presumably because he doesn't know any better -- is that there is something a teeny bit more inflammatory about this fiction-posing-as-truth: that Jesus of Nazareth was not God.

No biggie, though.

Oh: please don't comment on how I'm being ridiculous because "it's just a novel". Brown believes the basic lines of the thesis, and his forward tries to pass the thesis off as true. And early on, he relentlessly asserted the factuality of his historical assertions (until experts and other informed commenters started demonstrating their utter falsity). Not only that, but plenty of people apparently think it really is true.

So: if that's your line, don't bother.